Quack or Snack Awards 2026

Mehmet Oz

highalternative medicinesupplement promotion

Mehmet Oz is a Harvard- and Penn-educated cardiothoracic surgeon who leveraged his legitimate credentials to become a television personality promoting pseudoscientific health products and unproven remedies to a mass audience. A 2014 Senate committee hearing rebuked him for using his show to promote

Andrew Wakefield

criticalanti-vaccineMMR fraud

Andrew Wakefield is a British former physician who published a now-retracted and fraudulent 1998 study falsely claiming the MMR vaccine causes autism, triggering a global vaccine scare that resulted in measles outbreaks and preventable deaths. His medical license was revoked by the UK General Medica

Joseph Mercola

criticalanti-vaccineCOVID misinformation

Joseph Mercola is an osteopathic physician who built one of the internet's largest alternative health empires, generating over $100 million by selling supplements while spreading health misinformation. The FDA has warned him multiple times since 2005 for making illegal disease-treatment claims, and

Alex Jones

criticalconspiracy theoriesanti-vaccine

Alex Jones is the founder of InfoWars and arguably the most prominent conspiracy theorist in America, whose claims about vaccines, autism, government mind control, and the Sandy Hook shooting being a hoax led to a $1.4 billion defamation judgment against him. He funds his conspiracy empire primarily

Neil deGrasse Tyson

astrophysicscosmology

Astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium who has spent decades making astronomy accessible through books, television, podcasts, and YouTube, hosting Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.

Bill Nye

science-educationclimate-change

Mechanical engineer turned television science educator who hosted the Emmy Award-winning Bill Nye the Science Guy from 1993–1999 and remains a prominent public advocate for science, evolution, and climate change literacy.

Veritasium

physicsscience-education

Canadian-Australian physicist with a PhD in physics education research who uses street interviews, experiments, and expert conversations to correct deep scientific misconceptions on YouTube.

3Blue1Brown

mathematicslinear-algebra

Stanford mathematics graduate Grant Sanderson creates visually stunning animated explanations of advanced mathematics, making concepts from linear algebra to neural networks genuinely intuitive.